Quite a few weeks ago, on anoth­er Sunday, I woke up with Loo sleep­ing next to me. I could nev­er sleep past sev­en because of my work hours, and Loo rarely gets to bed before 11 the night before. Our sched­ules were, and still are, almost an eight hour shift away from each oth­er. This does­n’t put us in the great­est of moods, and makes us say things that we don’t mean (on my end, at least, I can’t speak for her).

Like on that Sunday, after wak­ing up and sit­ting in the IKEA PELLO for an hour lis­ten­ing to my music, I was grumpy to say the least. I was­n’t tired enough to sleep, but I was­n’t rest­ed enough to do any­thing.

I decid­ed to just get out and walk, not sus­pect­ing how beau­ti­ful the autumn day was. Everything I loved most about the fall was in that morn­ing; the light chill in the air, the lay­ers of colours, the man­i­fest atmos­phere. The walk was brief, just along the canal and back, but it was a shiv­er of the sens­es that only comes out a few days of the year.

When I returned, I still was­n’t in the best of sorts. My frus­tra­tion about our mis­matched sched­ules was start­ing to come through. Loo got up and we argued, try­ing to fig­ure out who was to blame. In the end, I real­ized that it was­n’t either of our faults, but we were both pay­ing for it.

Even though we argued, we end­ed up resolv­ing things, a lit­tle wis­er, and still just as tired. Another hur­dle jumped, anoth­er obsta­cle that won’t get in our way again. I like to think that only good came out of that morn­ing, and that if it did­n’t hap­pen, I would­n’t have expe­ri­enced what I was meant to.

Like watch­ing jog­gers kick up the autumn leaves strewn across the pave­ment.